Build reusable spacecraft Orion completed

Photo of the assembled Orion ship (when clicking on the photo, the image will open in full size, ~ 5MB)

Good news for those who hope to see a man’s flight to Mars: the assembly of the reusable Orion spacecraft has been completed in the United States. It is on this ship that it is planned to send a manned expedition to an asteroid in the 20s, and then - a manned expedition to Mars. Now the ship is in the Kennedy Space Center, and will be here until November 10.

After that, the ship will be sent to Cape Canaveral, this is where the first Orion test flight will be conducted. NASA said earlier that the ship would be sent to space on a Delta booster rocket, and that will be so. The test flight will be carried out over a distance of more than 4 thousand kilometers from the surface of the Earth, the duration of the flight is 4.5 hours.
')
Orion consists of two modules - habitable, for the team, and cargo. The total weight of the ship is about 20 tons. The diameter of the base of the ship - about 5 meters, height - 3.3 m ( Wiki ).


Ship design

NASA sees Orion as a replacement for Shuttles. In the 1920s, NASA plans to seize the asteroid and transport it to the orbit of the moon. Further, manned expeditions will be sent to this asteroid to study this object in detail, as well as to train before sending a manned expedition to Mars.

As for this expedition, it is planned to make it already in 2030. In 2018, the Space Launch System (SLS) super-heavy launch vehicle will be completed. It is with this truck that Orion will be sent to deep space.

Via NASA